


Skin Deep

by quiettewandering



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel in the Bunker, Comforting Dean, Fluff with a side of angst, Human Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8250964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiettewandering/pseuds/quiettewandering
Summary: Dean notices something wrong with Cas when he moves into the bunker. Cas doesn't know how to handle his newly human sensations.





	

Dean hears it on the second night that Cas comes to stay with them in the bunker: a relentless thumping against the wall, as though Cas’s bed has a mind of its own and is staging an escape via busting through the drywall. 

Dean’s room is directly next to Cas’s, so he very well can’t ignore it. 

“What was that noise last night?” he asks the dark circles underneath Cas’s eyes. 

Cas looks up from his soggy cereal. “What do you mean?”

“You heard what I said, man. It sounded like there was a poltergeist banging things around in there.”

“I took no notice.” Cas takes a bite of his cereal and grimaces. “Sam told me that he found a case. I’ll have my cell phone on in case you need research assistance while you're gone.” His barely touched cereal bowl clanging against the metal sink is the only goodbye Dean gets before Cas leaves the kitchen.

The hunt Sam found takes them only a night away to complete. Cas greets them from the huge chair in the library when they roll in a couple of days later, his feet curled underneath his legs. Dean notices the skin beneath Cas’s left eye twitching erratically, his nails constantly scratching at his arms, his face pale. 

To respect Cas and his transition as a hundred-percent fallen angel and human, Dean doesn’t comment.

But the damn thumping in his room does pick up like regular clockwork, every night, on an unpredictable and jolty loop. 

He bursts into Cas’s room on the third night, three a.m., ready to demand what the hell is going on, but trips unceremoniously across a pile of sheets after promptly stepping through the door. 

Flicking on the light, he sees Cas lying in his bed on a completely bare mattress, arms hugged around himself, nails scratching lightly at his arms. 

“Cas, buddy, what the hell?”

Cas looks over his shoulder, eyes wide. “Dean.”

“Yeah, it’s me, care to explain what’s going on in here?” He gesticulates to the sheets strewn on the ground. Cas follows his gesture thoughtfully. 

“The sheets were uncomfortable,” he admits softly. 

“And the goddamn thumping noise that’s been goin’ on for the past week in here?”

Cas gives a small shrug and resumes facing the wall. He reaches behind his shoulder to itch at his back. 

“Whatever,” Dean mutters, swinging the door shut behind him as he stalks back to his room.

*

Sam’s discussing a case that he found in Montana the next morning when Cas face-plants into his otherwise untouched cereal.

Dean and Sam spring forward, knees knocking against the table, to each grab one of Cas’s shoulders and tilt him back in the chair. Cas sputters out milk through his nose but otherwise stays unconscious. 

“Is he sick?” Sam fusses with a frown.

Holding a hand on Cas’s cool forehead and checking under his nose for regular breathing, Dean shakes his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.” He considers the lines of exhaustion painted in Cas’s face. “I just think he’s really tired.”

Managing to prop him to his feet, Sam and Dean drag Cas to his bedroom. When Sam’s face twists in confusion at the sheets lying on the ground and Cas’s bare mattress, Dean grumbles, “Don’t ask.” 

“I’ll wash them anyway.” Sam gathers them into his arms and Dean shuts the door behind them. 

The goddamn thumping resumes an hour later. 

“Okay, what—“ Dean stops short when he flings the door open. Cas is lying in a fetal position on the bed, fingernails scratching at his arms and neck and back as he twists and turns in the bed, making it thump against the wall. 

Through gritted teeth, Cas says, “Go away, Dean,” but Dean is already Cas’s side, grabbing his shoulders. 

“What can I do? What’s wrong?”

“It’s fine,” Cas snaps, abruptly sitting up and scratching at either of his cheeks furiously. “Just leave me.”

“That’s what this noise has been? You scratching like a goddamn maniac?”

“Everything itches,” Cas says helplessly, scratching at his left wrist while his other hand scrubs at his right ankle. “It won’t stop, even if I do this for hours.”

“Okay, hang on.” Dean grabs either of Cas’s wrists and holds him while Cas squirms. “What do you mean it itches?”

Cas grimaces and lets out a frustrated groan. “My skin--it's relentlessly itchy. I can’t sleep and it won’t stop.” He tries to wiggle his wrists from Dean’s tight grasp. “Let go of me.”

“That’s what was up with the sheets?”

“I thought that’s what caused the itching.”

“When have you slept last?” He shakes at Cas when he doesn’t answer. “Cas, when’s the last time you slept?”

Cas grudgingly answers, “Three days ago.” Dean’s surprise loosens his grip on Cas, who takes the opportunity to snatch his hands away and scratch at his scalp.

Three days? Cas has been there for five. Only been human for six. What the hell makes a fallen angel scratch himself to death? “Cas, hey, listen.” Dean grabs Cas’s shoulder and tries to steady him. “Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out, but you gotta stop scratching, ok?”

“I can’t, Dean,” Cas says with a frustrated huff of breath, his voice catching. He rubs at his eyes. “Everything is crawling all over me, all the time, thousands of bacteria and micro specks of dust and mites and cells—“ His voice descends into a frantic murmur, hanging his head and scratching furiously at his stomach. 

Clearly, this is out of Dean’s department. There’s another Winchester in this bunker that would deal with this much better than him. Dean begins to back out of the room to find Sam. 

“Dean.” Cas is curled in on himself, looking at him with hollow eyes. 

“Dean,” Cas says again, “please don’t…” He mutters in frustration as he itches at his arms, distressed when it seems to do nothing, and he shakes his head. “No, never mind.”

It’s Sam’s area of expertise. Sam deals with the feelings and the panic attacks and the freshly human angels. But Cas looks so small, curled up like that; such a contrast to how large and commanding he was as an angel. It makes Dean uncomfortable.

He needs to make it right, somehow.

He kneels beside Cas’s bed, putting a hand on Cas’s knee. “Cas,” he says. Stark blue eyes flicker up at him. “What does the itching feel like?”

“Relentless.”

“Does your skin burn?”

“No.”

“When you itch it, does it feel better?”

“No,” Castiel all but moans, his face shrinking into a desperate scowl. “Nothing helps.”

Dean sighs. “Take off your shirt. Lemme see your skin.”

Professionally looking past Cas’s hard stomach and broad chest, Dean examines his smooth, tan skin. “You don’t have a rash,” he muses out loud. Probably dry skin. The bunker is unusually dry in the fall.

“Nothing is comfortable,” Cas says through tight lips. “The mattress is hard. My clothes are constricting. The sheets are scratchy. My skin is tight. And I—“ He looks up at Dean with desperate eyes. “And my wings are gone.” 

Dean considers Cas’s pale face for a moment. Nursing fallen angels with broken minds are far above his paygrade, but it’s Cas. And seeing Cas in distress is about as difficult to witness as when Sammy cried as Dean and John left him behind on hunts. 

Dean’s eyes flicker to the door. He reaches out a calloused hand and firmly runs it up and down Cas’s arm. Cas closes his eyes at the touch. “We’ll fix this, okay, Cas? I have a plan, but it involves you having to stay up for just a few more hours. Then you can sleep.” 

Cas nods, leaning into Dean’s touch. He’s finally still; his fingers aren’t skimming across his skin in a frantic search for itchy spots. Dean smiles softly and puts his other hand against Cas’s opposite arm, firmly running his palm up and down his skin. “I have a plan, Cas, and it’ll work,” he says.

Nodding again, Cas whispers, “Okay, Dean.”

Dean drives them to a Target twenty miles away. He leaves Cas in the clothing section to feel every shirt, pant, and pajamas for what feels best as Dean jogs to the pharmacy aisle to grab soap and lotion for dry skin. He gathers all the soft flannel, stretchy khaki pants, and boxer briefs that Cas picked, including a silk nightshirt that is a woman’s extra-large—Dean doesn’t comment—to bring to the checkout aisle. While standing in line, Dean has Cas try the four different lotions he picked on his wrist, seeing which one feels the best against his skin.            

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas murmurs in the passenger seat as they drive home. He’s regressed to relentlessly itching every part of his skin. 

“Don’t thank me yet, until my plan works,” Dean warns. He reaches over the console and puts a hand on Cas’s arm, firmly rubbing his hand up and down, never taking his eyes off the road.

Cas smiles gratefully.

Once at home, they quickly step past a confused Sam, Dean barking “No questions,” when he tries to ask. Dean ushers Cas into the bathroom, instructing him to gently use the anti-itch soap against his skin and then the moisturizing lotion Cas picked out. While he’s in the shower, Dean digs through the laundry for the softest-feeling towel, and smacks his forehead when he realizes that he should get plain detergent so that the perfumes don’t hurt Cas’s skin. He adds it to the growing list of how to accommodate human Cas. 

Not that he minds.

When Cas is showered and clothed (after Dean throws the silk nightshirt and a loose pair of boxers at him), Dean fishes out his last-ditch effort to calm down Cas’s skin. A huge, fuzzy blanket that he bought for himself at Target months ago.

Cas is fascinated by how soft it is; he runs his hand across it, eyes wide.

“Being human isn’t all bad; there’s some good things,” Dean tells him with a small grin. 

Cas nods, entranced by the blanket. He says softly, “I think I’m ready to sleep now.”

“Oh! Sure.” Dean tucks the blanket around Cas as his angel lays onto the bed. “We’ll get you a memory foam mattress tomorrow. Feels way better.”

“Because it remembers you,” Cas says with a smile, no doubt recalling all the times that Dean bragged about his new mattress in his new bunker home.

“Exactly.” Dean puts his fists on his hips, nodding down at Cas, who looks much calmer than he did a few hours ago. “You look settled, so I’ll let you sleep.”

Cas shifts under his blanket, frowning, eyes downcast. “You know you can… stay a while.”

Dean’s heart flip-flops in his chest. “Yeah?”

“When you…” Cas clears his throat. “When you were rubbing my arms, that seemed to help.”

“I noticed that.”

“But the room is small,” Cas continues, “and there’s no chair for you to sit on.”

“Yeah.” Dean cautiously sits at the edge of the mattress. “I’ll just have to sit here, then.”

“But that’s uncomfortable for a long length of time.”

“Yeah. And I’m pretty tired after that Target trip.”

Cas lifts his blanket, that damn ugly—adorable—silk shirt rippling against his skin. “You are welcome to share my blanket, Dean.”

“It only makes sense,” Dean agrees with a shrug, lying down next to Cas and taking him cautiously into his arms, both hands soothingly running up and down Cas’s arms. “Better?” Dean smiles into Cas’s freshly shampooed hair when Cas sighs contentedly.

“Much better, Dean,” Cas murmurs against Dean’s chest, eyes finally flitting closed to fall into a deep sleep.     


**Author's Note:**

> [come visit me i like friends](https://wanderingcas.tumblr.com)


End file.
